Early Dynastic Egypt is the period that came after the Predynastic Period (c. 5500 – c.3100 B.C.) and has the elements and the political shape of the Old Kingdom (c.2575 – c. 2150 B.C). This is the first time that Egypt is united under the rule of one king. It is unknown who this king was (or whether it was one king who did all the hard work, or whether there were several who took a go at it until finally succeeding…) What is generally thought to be true is that it was around this period that Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt were being united under one leader. As was written in a previous post, Egyptologists have come to believe that the one who united Egypt was a man known today as Narmer, the first king of the First real Egyptian Dynasty. Egyptologists have ‘translated’ the palette of Narmer as the unification of Egypt, because on the one side he is wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and wielding the papyrus and the mace (also symbols of Lower Egypt). On the other side he is shown wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt and wielding the flowering lotus and the mace (the symbols of Upper Egypt).

However, it is incorrect to believe that Egypt remained united under one ruler during the entire Pharaonic Period. Until the Hellenic invasion in the fourth century B.C., Egypt was divided at least three more times when there have been two dynasties of pharaohs fighting one another to be the sole ruler of the vast land of Egypt.

Getting back to the Egyptology of Predynastic Egypt, this period is very vague. What is known is that by the end of this period Egypt was already trading with the outside world. The evidence to this is found on many archaeological sites. For example, gold. Egypt doesn’t have gold, the only place where they get their gold for their famous statues and jewelry was Nubia. Also, some objects made of obsidian were found in Egypt that have been traced back to Anatolia (Asia Minor). There were also objects made of lapis lazuli that came all the way from Afghanistan!

They certainly got around, something that tends to surprise people of today that the Ancient World wasn’t quite as small as we think it was. The ancient inhabitants did not think that at all. They could, and did, travel beyond their own land and they traded with other Peoples. What better way was for someone to display the fact they are rich if not by acquiring objects brought back to Egypt from faraway lands? The Peoples of the ancient world were just as determined to travel beyond their backyards as we do today. From the archaeological evidence themselves we can find amazing things of how open the world was (even though I admit that they didn’t have the world-wide web) but for people who didn’t have buses and airplanes, and not even camels, I think they didn’t do badly at all.

Elizabeth Taylor appeared in many good films such as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “A Place in the Sun”, “Ivanhoe” and even an Agatha Christie thriller “The Mirror Crack’d” (though this is not the best version of the book). But there is one film where she will be remembered the most, “Cleopatra”. The lovely, beautiful and graceful Elizabeth Taylor portrayed one of the most unusual women in all of history, the queen of Egypt from the first century B.C. Cleopatra VII (c. 69 – 12/08/30 B.C.). Cleopatra was considered a beauty of the time who succeeded in capturing the hearts of two of the most hardest and powerful men of her time, Julius Gaius Caesar and Marcus Antonius. Or as we know them in the film – Rex Harrison and Richard Burton.

One of the most famous scenes in the film is the first meeting between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. At the time Cleopatra and her brother, Ptolemy XIII, were not exactly on good terms. Well… actually, Cleopatra wanted her brother/husband dead so she could become sole ruler and Ptolemy just wanted to get rid of his meddlesome sister/wife once and for all so that he could rule Egypt in peace. (lovely family). Anyway, they both turned to the mighty Roman empire via Julius Caesar, who had his own plans for Egypt. Because Cleopatra was banned from coming into the palace where Caesar was, she devised a plan which intended to get her to Caesar and to entice him at the same time to be on her side of the conflict. Her guard smuggled her into the palace by rolling her up in a carpet. Ceasar/Harrison kept pointing his big sword at the carpet before finally allowing it to unroll thus reveling a beautifully tidy Cleopatra, slightly sweaty, who then got up behaving as though this occured eveyday and absolutely dazzled the hard warrior! (I don’t know about you, but after being carried around in a carpet I would have been disoriented and my hair would have looked like a mess. But then, we can’t all be like Cleo/Lizzy!). There is such a legend that Cleopatra met Caesar though I don’t know when that legend was born but in modern times it has become so famous that it is used often in the media. Xena used this trick when she pretended to be Cleopatra (this was after Cleopatra was murdered by a viper) to find her way into Mark Antony’s tent (Xena: Warrior Princess, season 5 episode 18; ‘Cleopatra and Antony’). It was also used in the HBO series of Rome when Cleopatra met Caesar (season 1, episode 8; ‘Caesarian’).

In short, Elizabeth Taylor gave a brilliant performance and was the first actress ever to receive one million dollars! She deserved it too.

Taking a small break from Ancient Egypt, I have come to the decision that saying a few words on some of the Egyptologists who contributed so much to our knowledge on the Ancient Egyptians and their lives, is absolutely necessary.

When one is studying Egyptology, one name keeps coming up, the name of the man known as the ‘father of Egyptian Araeology’: Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (mentioned in the previous post). I couldn’t continue using his name in my blog without saying a few words about the man himself. Aside lending my college the use of his name, the Petrie Institute of the University College of London where both I and my cousin attended, he was also a remarkable man. Mad, but remarkable.

There are many stories on Petrie and his eccentricities, such as forcing all his students to run up and down the stairs every morning to get the ‘juices’ flowing, but he truly was one of the most remarkable men of his time. He succeeded in processing a large amount of data without the use of a computer! (There were no computers at the time, but in my opinion even if there were he still wouldn’t have used them). He loved digging not only in Egypt but also in Palestine (Israel today) which he loved so much that he wished to be buried on Mt. Zion. It wasn’t unusual for an Egyptologist to be interested in Palestine, for both areas are connected throughout history (even today). What makes Petrie stand out even more amongst the Egyptology community is the fact that he is buried without his head!

I heard this story many times and yet I am still amazed by it. Around the beginning of the 20th century there was a keen interest in the checking of brains. What makes a genius…well…a genius? So, Petrie, who loved science and the study of the human race, decided to donate his head to the Royal College of Surgeons of London and upon his death his body was buried in the Protestant Cemetary on Mt. Zion and his head was sent back to London. But there was one small problem that caused a delay in the delivery, World War II! Petrie died in 1942 and the post was a little slow, his head was lost! Eventually, to everyone’s relief, his head was found in a warehouse sometime after the end of the war and was sent back to London where, apparently, it can still be found today. What a rush!

In 1894 Flinders Petrie discovered an ancient settlement in Naqada, a town found on the west bank of the Nile. With the information Petrie dug up he was able to put a timeline on the Egyptian civilization during the Predynastic period. It is mostly from this site and the tombs found on this site that we know a little of the people living in Egypt during the sixth and the third millenium B.C. (Here is the age-old question, Petrie claimed that this civilization had no connection to the later Egyptians and were in fact invaders with a foreign culture, why would he think that?) The claim is that Petrie didn’t recognise the funerary evidence as similar to the funerary evidence that was being found from later periods, and that, for Petrie, meant invaders and intruders. For the next fifty years more and more evidence was being excavated of a prehistoric Egypt that built a clearer picture for us of what Egypt might have looked like in those early times when writing was not even a vague concept in the horizon. As the time drew nearer to the unification(?) of Upper and Lower Egypt by king Menes (Narmer) the different elements that were found began to look more and more similar to the cultural elements found in the Old Kingdom. So, it would seem that Petrie was wrong and that a connection (a cultural connection) was found linking the Prehistoric invaders and the Pharaonic Egyptians.

The interesting thought that comes to mind was why did Petrie think that the Naqada people were the invaders? The answer was that the unusual contents of the graves he found were so different from the later Egyptians that it was obvious that they were not the same people. Does that mean that the later Egyptians in Petrie’s mind were the original Egyptians? Why was it unthinkable to believe that the Pharaonic Egyptians might have hailed from the Naqada people? Evidence found in later digs have confirmed a direct link between the two (though, at the time Petrie laughed at the idea), does that mean that the Pharaonic Egyptians were the descendants of the invaders? If so, where are the ‘original’ people…? For that matter, where are the Pharaonic Egyptians?

One other fun character who appears in the first two films, though sadly not in the third, is Ardeth Bey, the Medjay leader. Though Ardeth Bey is not a historical figure, his background is not entirely made up. First, in the original film of 1932, Ardeth Bey was the alias the mummy used to get around Cairo. Second, there are mentions of the Medjay in Ancient Egyptian records. The Medjay were first mentioned in the Old Kingdom (c. 29th – 25th century B.C.). It seems they were a tribe of people who lived in Nubia, maybe they were named such because of the area they came from was known as Medjay at the time. During the Middle Kingdom (c. 21st – 17th century B.C.), after being conquered by the Egyptians, they were incorporated into the Egyptian army and became warriors of some repute. In the 18th Dynasty (c. 16th – 14th century B.C.) the name Medjay no longer refered to the tribe (or geographical area) but to the pharaohs’ body guards and Ancient Egyptians police force. Yes they had police even back then, though if they wanted to, they could seriously kick your arse if you were out of line.

The Scorpion King, AKA The Rock, was a character that gave Rick and Evy O’Connell another run for their money. His part in the film was strange, if not ambiguous, of the king who fought over three thousand years ago in the hopes of conquering the known world. He was given command of the legions of Anubis, after a promise he made to him which he sealed by eating a scorpion (hence the name?), he won the wars and was then taken in a sand storm away to a secret place (frankly, he got the bad end of the deal. I mean after conquering the known world he disappears in a puff of sand! What was the point of fighting yet not benefiting from the fruits of his tiresome labours?!). This place, known as Ahm Shere, contains an oasis that in the centre there is a pyramid with a great diamond decorating its peak (and a shit load of tiny skeleton pygmies I mean, why?). To get back to the point, Rick and Evy have to deal now with the original mummy and with another monster – thing (The Rock is scary enough but with the body of a scorpion?).

The Scorpion King

Yes, if you were wondering, even the weird character of the Scorpion King has a historical counterpart. Well, actually, he has two historical counterparts. The first king of this name is also very obscure, nothing is known of him except he might have existed in the 33rd century B.C. He might have been the first true king of Upper Egypt. The second king of this name is slightly better known because of the famous Scorpion Macehead. The Scorpion Macehead was found in the late 1890s in Hierakonpolis. Some Egyptologists believe that the macehead shows the first signs of the unification of Egypt, others identify king Scorpion with Nermer (the king who most Egyptologists belive unified Egypt in the 31st century B.C.), though it is most likely that Namrer was king Scorpion’s successor who completed the latter’s conquest of Egypt. What we know for now is that one of these kings was responsible for the unification of Egypt and both left items attributing this fact (Narmer’s Palette).